The Two-Bear Mambo cap-3

by Joe R. Lansdale

  I was thinking about being shot. That had been damn serious, and scary too. Leonard had been hit worse, and he almost lost a leg. But those times were not times I liked to think about often.

  I had a feeling this little escapade wasn't going to be one of my top ten on memory lane either.

  "You think you hurt now, give it a couple hours, tomorrow morning," Bacon said. "You be stiff as a young bull's dick, only not as happy. You know that was all a setup don't you?"

  "Back at the cafe?"

  "Uh huh. They layin' for you and the other'n. Mr. Hat Over His Dick."

  "Leonard," I said.

  "They just waiting for you to be where they want you, and I guess the cafe got as good as they could get. I think Mr. Jackson, him not liking Mrs. Rainforth had somethin' to do with it too. He don't go to the cafe. Never. Not even for coffee. Reckon he figured he was gonna shit off the papers, he oughta do it someone else's place. Someplace where there was plenty of folks behind him. They don't show a little support, they could lose jobs. 'Sides, I think they really liked beatin' on y'all."

  "They did seem jovial. I would have thought he'd have picked a more private spot."

  "He might have. But I figure, right now, he just want to run you off 'cause you askin' too many questions. He like to sport a little for the town too, keep showin' 'em who's boss. Show the law don't worry him none."

  I lay down on the couch very carefully. It was damned uncomfortable and smelled musty. I turned my head and saw the shelf of dust-covered knickknacks. I said, "You don't look like a man likes knickknacks."

  "Can't live without them. I had my way, I'd have a room with them and nothing else. Especially they was ceramics of little kitties or ducks. . . . Them's my wife's."

  "Where is she?"

  "Dead."

  "Hell, I'm sorry."

  "I ain't. I been meaning to sack up that shit of hers for years, throw it out, but I just ain't had the time. Ain't got no milk, want some sugar in yours?"

  "Just black," I said.

  "Way I like my women," he said. He brought the coffee in, said, "Sit up, man, I got to have some room. Sides, I got a program to watch. I like the noon news. I like to know who's killin' who."

  "I'm injured here."

  "Sit up anyway."

  I managed myself to a sitting position, slid down to the far end of the couch and took the coffee he was offering me. "Thanks," I said.

  "Don't make nothing of it. I was gonna fix me some anyway."

  Bacon turned on the television, adjusted the rabbit ears for a while, did everything with them except tie them in a knot, but he didn't get a picture. Just snow.

  "Shit," he said, and turned off the set. "Guess we got to talk."

  "Do you think Jackson Brown did it? Hung the fella in the jail?"

  "Bobby Joe? If ever anybody needed hangin', it was that sonofabitch."

  "He's certainly popular around here. I haven't talked to anyone liked him."

  "Nothing to like. I enjoyed puttin' him down."

  "Come again."

  "I buried that fool. Dug the hole for him, anyway. I do back-hoe work, I'm asked. Make a little on the side, digging ditches, sewer lines, and graves. Gotta stay on top of stuff, you gonna make ends meet."

  Now I knew what kind of machinery was under the tarp.

  "Well, do you think Brown did it?"

  "He may not have done it himself, but he probably behind it, 'cause I don't think Bobby Joe hung himself. I think he con that white sonofabitch down here with that music business, thinking he gonna get big money out of him, then Bobby Joe got drunk, and didn't think it through, decided to go for the short change. Just killed him for what he had in his wallet. Bobby Joe like that. Mean as ass rash. He might just thought it would be funny to see that peckerwood squirm. You know how they found that white man?"

  "No."

  "Hung by his heels from a tree with his throat cut."

  "Damn. Taking another angle on the subject, thing we came here for, Bacon, reason we ended up takin' this beatin', is we're trying to find a woman."

  "What man ain't?"

  "A certain woman. Named Florida. Good-lookin' young black woman, came here not long back? You saw her, you'd remember her."

  "That black fox? Shoot, she here fifteen minutes, everyone knew it. Every hard dick in niggertown was after her, and the peckerwoods was watchin' too. I was still able to trot, I'd have been after her."

  "She was interested in the Soothe case. She was here to look into it. Do you know what happened to her?"

  "She a fool. Come down this side of town talking about how she wanted to maintain Bobby Joe Soothe's legacy, like he had one. It was ole L.C. had the legacy. Bobby Joe could pick a guitar some, but he was a scum hole, and a scum hole don't deserve no legacy, 'sides that hole I dug for 'm. If'n he'd a takin' up preachin', he'd have been the perfect villain. As was, he once cut up his nephew."

  "I heard that story."

  "Hear about the German shepherd?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, that ain't true. That ole dog was part collie."

  "I don't suppose you caught the dog's name?"

  "Ralph. Tell you another one. Bobby Joe, he goin' to one of the joints, and he stepped in some cat shit by the door. Fella owns the joint, he got all kinds of cats. Don't really take good care of 'em none. Just lets 'em run wild. Throws a little food out the back, and well, them cats ain't spayed, and next to a rat and rabbit, ain't nothing likes to fuck better'n a cat. So they always makin' baby cats. Cat shit all over that place. Bobby Joe, he did his drinkin' there 'cause everyone was scared of him, and he liked that. He liked to go a place where people was afraid of him. Made him feel like a big dick. Anyways, he steps in this cat shit, and you know what he does?"

  "I can't even begin to guess."

  "He goes in and gets him a beer mug, and he scoops up some cat crap with it, then he comes in and makes the owner buy himself a beer. You know, take money out of his own pocket and put it in the register."

  "Least he gets the money back," I said.

  "That's right. Who says life ain't fair. Well, Bobby Joe makes this owner, Tiny Joe Timpson, called that 'cause he's big as a bear standing on a block of wood, makes this guy pour that beer on top of the cat shit, and drink it. And Bobby Joe, he ain't no big guy. Ain't no midget, but ain't no big guy either. That Tiny, he done killed six folks this year. Caught two of 'em breakin' in the place, killed two others 'cause he was fuckin' around with their wives and they caught on, and done killed two women. One of 'em 'cause she got mad Tiny was keepin' her husband down at the bar all hours of the night. She complained and words got tossed, then Tiny shot her. Called it self-defense. Can-tuck, he looked into it, but wasn't no one contradicted Tiny. Said she tried to kill him with a beer mug."

  "What about the other woman?"

  "She was asleep in the driveway, and he backed over her."

  "She pass out there?"

  "Yeah, right after Tiny hit her in the head with a Coke bottle."

  "Cantuck didn't do nothing?"

  "He tried, but black folks, they keep things to themselves, and the white folks, they let 'em. But you can see the kind of guy Tiny is, and this Bobby Joe, he makes Tiny drink this beer with the cat shit in it."

  "Man, I don't think that'll catch on."

  "Tiny made sure it didn't. Next day, he got his shotgun, and he shot all them cats, and when he run out of shells he beat the rest of 'em to death. He wouldn't even hang a picture of a cat in his place now. That cat shit, it's always right there in the back of his throat."

  "I wasn't under the impression Florida was here to find out about his legacy. She was planning to write some kind of article on him."

  "Heard some of the guys say somethin' about that, but I don't know about it. She liked to hang over at the roadhouse, talk to people about Bobby Joe like he was some kind of star. She wanted to buy his guitar, music tapes, stuff like that. She had the money for it and she told anyone would listen to her she did. Them boys over
there, they was tellin' her all that shit about how L.C. and Bobby Joe sold their souls to the devil at the crossroads and drank the devil's piss and such to play guitar, and she was eatin' it up."

  "I don't understand why she'd talk to just anyone about buying Soothe's stuff."

  "'Cause she couldn't find none of L.C. s or Bobby Joe's stuff on her own, and his relatives didn't have nothin' of his, didn't want nothing to do with him. They were scared of him. Hell, he used to rape his own sister. They say a female dog run across the yard, he'd chase it down, fuck it and kill it. They wasn't no sorrier sonofabitch than Bobby Joe. He born bad, man. All that legacy stuff started 'cause Bobby Joe did a little playin' around Tyler, and someone on some magazine or paper or somethin' interviewed him, and he told all these stories about how he had L.C.'s stuff, and he talked that voodoo jive, said he had some unpublished songs L.C. had written out, and he had a couple songs on tape was recorded way back but never put on record."

  "Did he?"

  "Not that I know of. Not that anyone I know knew of."

  "You're sayin' Florida was fishing?"

  "And she was offering money for information. Lots of money. Them roadhouse lizards, about half of 'em ain't worth a shit. They'd tell her anything she want to hear they think they might make'm a dollar or get 'em some pussy. And it piss me off when anyone try to make somethin' special out of that nigger. He was sorry, just plain sorry. He meet that white boy at a roadhouse here. I seen 'em there. I was drinking a beer and watching 'em, and ole Bobby Joe had that white boy eating out his hand. Talkin' that music shit, playing like he some kind of jive nigger, and that ole white boy, he just shakin' his head like he was talkin' to some kind of god. He was talkin' to the devil, that's who he was talkin' to. They left together in that white boy's car, and wasn't more'n a couple hours after that, they found that peckerwood with his throat cut, hanging from a tree just off the highway, right by the goddamn road led up to Bobby Joe's house. Bobby Joe smart in one way, but in another he just a drunk field hand with a bad temper. He didn't think no farther than the length of his dick or the deep of his thirst. That's the way he was, and that's all there was to it.

  "All that voodoo shit didn't do him no good when that Officer Reynolds show up. After ole Officer find out about that dead white boy, he went over to the roadhouse, asked around, and me and some others told him we'd seen Bobby Joe and the white boy together, seen 'em leave together, and when ole shitass Officer kick Bobby Joe's door off the hinges, there's that drunk fuck sittin' at the table with that peckerwood's watch and wallet, countin' the money. Bobby Joe tried to fight that big cop with his guitar, and Officer just tore that all to hell, then ole Officer stomped the stuffin' out Bobby Joe, opened that boy's mouth, made him bite the edge of the table, then slammed him in the back of the head with his forearm, knocked out all of his front teeth."

  "I believe that's police brutality."

  "Way the law works here. You don't fuck with the white law. 'Course, Bobby Joe had it comin'. Law or anyone couldn't have done nothin' to that jackass would have bothered me."

  "How do you know it happened like that?"

  "Filipine told me."

  "Filipine?"

  "That's what we call fella lives down the road here. His mama black, but his father was one of them Filipinos. He went with Officer to show him where Bobby Joe lived. He probably didn't have no choice but to go. Didn't want to go, ole Officer would have kicked his ass up around his ears."

  I thought about all that, realized suddenly why Florida had withdrawn her money from the bank. She was a woman with a plan. A bigger one than I had first thought. She saw herself not only as some sort of crusader, but as someone who was going to preserve a heritage, and maybe get some notoriety in the process. She had envisioned Bobby Joe as some kind of Robert Johnson. Magazine articles. A book. TV movies. That would be her approach. Florida was one ambitious rascal. She'd most likely given up her apartment with plans to live here, near her subject matter.

  I heard a car splashing through the water outside and became, to put it mildly, tense.

  Bacon got up, went to the window, pulled back the curtain and looked out. "Doctor," he said.

  The doctor came in wet and old, bald-headed and grumpy. The black skin on his forehead was deeply wrinkled, the wrinkles sagged like worn-out Venetian blinds. The water beaded on his gray slicker like blisters on a rhino's hide. He had a bag in his hand, not a little black bag, but a big red plastic bag, as if he'd just come from shopping at a toy store. He sat the bag down, took off the slicker and dropped it on the floor and the water pooled beneath it.

  "What the fuck you doin' to my floor?" Bacon asked.

  The doctor looked the place over, then looked at Bacon. "Say what?"

  "Yeah, well, all right," Bacon said.

  The doctor picked up his bag, and Bacon led him back to where Leonard lay. A moment later Bacon came from the bedroom and shut the door, said, "He always was a dickhead. But he's a good doctor. Only lost a few dogs he's worked on, and they'd been hit real bad by cars. He do all right with horses too. He's had a lot of cats die on him, but I never did give a shit about the outcome of cats."

  "He's a veterinarian?"

  "He do a little side work, it comes up. Only real black doctor lives fifty miles away, and I'll tell you now, in this rain, this being Grovetown, he wouldn't have come."

  "Great. A vet."

  Twenty minutes went by and the doctor came out of the bedroom with his big red plastic bag and sighed.

  "How bad is he?" I asked.

  "Looks hell of a lot worse than he is. Took a good beatin', but folks doin' it didn't do too special a job, all things considered. He's a tough sonofabitch, and he'll be all right. I worked on a hog like that once. Some kids climbed in a pen with a bunch of hogs, took baseball bats to 'em, but this old boar took a good beatin', got one of the kids down and ate part of his face 'fore the kid could get out of the pen."

  "So he'll be all right?"

  "Not tomorrow, but he'll heal. Don't seem to have no real internal injuries, which surprises me." "He knows something about covering up, going with the flow," I said. "Experience."

  "I put his dick in his pants, by the way."

  "That's good," Bacon said. "Me and him wouldn't do it."

  "I wore gloves," the doctor said. "Well, let me look you over, whitey. Take off them duds."

  I could hardly rise off the couch. In fact, I couldn't. Bacon got hold of me and lifted me up. He smelled of fried foods and sweat. My muscles ached deeply and I felt ill to my stomach. Standing was the most painful thing I'd ever done next to paying taxes. I gingerly unbuttoned my shirt and the doctor helped me take it off. My skin had turned purple and black and green where I had taken shots from fists and feet. The lump on the side of my head hurt the worst.

  The doctor poked and prodded, felt and looked. He said, "That one there, that's a shoe caught you."

  "Reckon so," I said. "Can't say as I was takin' notes."

  "Take off your pants."

  I did. My balls were the color of plums going to rot and were doubled in size.

  "You better get you some underwear," the doctor said. "These dudes swinging will make you see elephants."

  "I hear that," I said. "They aren't ruined are they?"

  "No. They'll heal. Ought to get you some Epsom salts, put it in the tub with hot water and soak for an hour or so every day." He looked at my head. "This is really the worse shot you got. You have any memory loss?"

  "I don't remember."

  "Ha. Ha," the doc said. Nobody had a sense of humor anymore.

  "Bacon, you watch him. He shows trouble remembering, repeating of phrases, then . . . well, I don't know. Give him a couple of aspirins, keep him awake."

  "Shit, man, he ain't my problem. I don't even know this guy.

  He go to sleep and die, it ain't my fault. He die, it won't be on my head. I'll sleep like a lawyer. It wasn't me got him into this. Him and ole Swole Head in there is the one's crapped in thei
r nest, not me."

  "Well, that's between you and him," said the doc. "He ain't none of my problem neither."

  "Sure I am," I said. "You're a man of medicine."

  "Just counts on animals. Someone found I was checkin' on you, they'd take my license. 'Sides, you seem all right to me." He poked me in the ribs with his finger. "That hurt?"

  "Hell yeah."

  "Good. I'm through. You gonna live. Just stay out of trouble for a while. I tell you, both you boys, you the luckiest fellas I've seen. Ain't neither one of you look like much, but you're both tough as a roadhouse steak. The one in there, his head wasn't like that before the beatin' was it?"

  "No."

  "Then he's tough, not just ugly. Y'all be all right. That's sixty dollars apiece."

  "Apiece?" I said. "What do you charge dogs?"

  "I don't charge them nothin', but their owners pay me sixty dollars apiece for a lookover like this."

  "We get anything for pain?"

  "My sympathies and Bacon's aspirin. I can't be dolin' out medicine. I'm a vet."

  "Hell," I said, and gave him some of the money Charlie had given me.

  About ten P.M. the rain slacked. I hadn't moved much from my position on the couch, and that had been a mistake. I was very stiff now. Bacon fixed some fried egg sandwiches and finally got the TV to work. He found an old black-and-white movie about gangsters, interspersed with long stupid commercials, and we watched it. When we finished the sandwiches, Bacon said,

  "You want some whiskey? I likes a little jolt or two before bedtime."

  "I gave up drinking anything but nonalcoholic beer."

  "You a drunk?"

  "Nope. Just felt it wasn't healthy."

  "I'm gonna take me a little jolt. All that pain and such, you might want you a little."

  "Oh, all right, what the hell, just a shot."

  He poured us both some in plastic glasses and gave me a handful of aspirin. I took the aspirin and we sipped and watched the movie. I finished off my whiskey and began to nod. The gangsters were taking another gangster for a ride when I lost track of the plot. Next thing I knew it was morning.

  Chapter 20